SINN Fein are promising a cost of living package that is worth thousands of euro to workers and families in tax cuts, slashing childcare fees and making prescription meds free.
And Mary Lou McDonald’s party has vowed to kick off these cuts with a mini budget within the first 100 days if they are elected to Government.
Sinn Fein today launched their manifesto which includes building 300,000 homes over the next five years – including 125,000 social, affordable purchase and cost rental homes at a cost of €7.4bn per year.
In healthcare, they plan to add 5,000 hospital beds to the system while also making prescription medicines free to all households and providing full medical cards to anyone who currently has a free GP card.
The party’s potential finance minister Pearse Doherty said he will abolish the USC for all workers on the first €45,000 you earn – which would amount to about €2,000 per year and cost the State €1.84 billion.
The Donegal TD has also committed to scrapping the local property tax and the TV licence all together.
The party proposes cutting the price of petrol and diesel by reversing two recent hikes for one year and claim they can reduce the price of childcare to €10 per day – saving a family currently paying €1,200 a month up to €600.
Mr Doherty said: “For every individual earning up to €100,000 you are going to be better off under Sinn Fein.
“You will pay less tax indeed our tax package will benefit you over €2,000 of tax reductions between the USC, our bands and our credits.
SOC DEMS’ TEACHER SHORTAGE BID & €350 PAID LEAVE PROMISE
By Emma Mooney
TEACHERS shouldn’t be forced to live in their childhood bedrooms in order to do their job, it’s claimed.
The Social Democrats have promised to tackle the ongoing shortage by providing affordable housing for educators.
Launching their 2024 manifesto, Deputy leader Cian O’Callaghan said affordable housing is the answer to the huge numbers of those in “key roles” leaving the country.
He said: “Part of the measures that we want to tackle the teacher shortage is our plans around affordable purchase housing, because we’re meeting teachers in their late 20’s, into their 30’s, who are doing very important jobs in their schools and classrooms and then are going home to their childhood bedrooms to live.
“That is not sustainable for them in the long run, we’re losing teachers who are emigrating because of that so, a key part of addressing the teacher shortage has to be to have affordable purchase housing at scale so people in this key roles have a good option.”
On childcare, the Soc Dems promised to introduce a number of measures that make rearing children more affordable.
Party member Jennifer Whitmore said: “We would extend the paid parent leave for children so that their first year can be spent with children.
“We would increase pay to €350 a week because it is expensive to take time off work to stay at home.
“We will introduce a public childcare scheme because we need to ensure that we deliver not just quality early years care, but that it’s actually affordable and available for parents, and that it offers good paying conditions and security for the staff sector, we’ve not seen that to date.”
“Those individuals won’t just benefit from that. If you have one child in childcare the benefit to you from the measure we’re going to introduce and have place by September of next year is €7,200 for every child you have in childcare.
“So immediately people will benefit from our tax package, our childcare package and the abolition of the local property tax, getting rid of the TV licence, making sure your petrol and diesel is not being increased.
“This is a real cost of living package and it will benefit those who are really, really struggling but all workers are going to get a lift from this.”
WHO CAN RUN & WHO CAN VOTE IN A GENERAL ELECTION?
TO run as a candidate in a general election and be in with a chance of being voted in as a TD you must meet a number of requirements.
Candidates must be a citizen of Ireland and over 21 years of age – to run for a political party you must go through your party’s political selection procedure.
To run as an independent candidate you must present your nomination paper to the returning officer in the constituency you wish to run in.
You can nominate yourself for election and you can run in multiple constituencies.
You do not have to own property or live in the constituency you run in.
To register, you must give the returning officer a certificate of party affiliation or statutory declarations signed by 30 constituents or a deposit of €500.
All nomination papers must be submitted by midday on the seventh day after the Clerk of the Dail issues the writ for the General Election.
In order to vote in a general election in Ireland you must meet multiple requirements.
Voters must be 18 years or older, a resident in Ireland and registered to vote.
Irish citizens can vote in general elections as can British citizens who live in Ireland and British citizens are recognised by the letter D on the Register.
EU citizens cannot vote in General Elections in Ireland and neither can non-EU citizens.
